


Teach Me How To Breathe

by losemyselfinthechemicalmoment



Category: All Time Low
Genre: Alex is sad but pretends he's not, Anxiety, Bands, Cutting, Eating Disorder, Happy Ending, I apologise, M/M, Panic Attacks, Rian can see right through him, Rilex - Freeform, Sad, Self-Harm, all time low - Freeform, because the world needs more of it, cut, first fanfic, possibly, probably, probably really shitty, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:12:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4102275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losemyselfinthechemicalmoment/pseuds/losemyselfinthechemicalmoment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rilex. Alex is sad, but keeps it under wraps. Rian is observant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0.05 Introduction

Alex, Jack, Rian and Zack were sitting at the back of the bus, discussing the show from the night before. It was one of the best they had played in a long time; the fans had been even more enthusiastic than usual, screaming out every lyric at the top of their lungs.

"It was fucking sick", Jack said, and the others nodded in agreement.  
"It's still crazy to think that all those people show up to see us", Rian stated incredulously.  
"And that for some of them, it's the highlight of their year," Zack added.  
The three of them stared at Alex, waiting for his addition.

But Alex hadn't even noticed the conversation going on around him, even though usually it was him who was at the centre of these discussions, laughing and chatting and expressing how amazing it was to see people singing the words you had written back at you, and about the couple in the front row who he was positive were going to start fucking in the middle of the concert, and the dad of two excitable 13 year old girls standing at the back who winced every time they swore, and.....

But today, Alex wasn't doing any of the aforementioned things. His face was even paler than usual, and there was the ghost of a shadow beneath his eyes. And despite the fact that it was a reasonably warm day, Alex was wearing clothes fit for winter and was huddled in on himself-but yet he was still shivering.

The other three locked eyes and exchanged worried looks. They had spent the better part of the past 7 years with each other, and knew practically everything about each other, even if it was never spoken aloud. Like if Jack was sad he would overcompensate by making even more dick jokes than usual, and if Rian was homesick he would wear that old grey sweater from high school, and if Zack was pissed off he would scribble aimlessly until it subsided.

And if Alex was having a bad day, you didn't talk to him for a few hours. But that Alex always had earphones in, either with music blaring to block out the world or simply resting in his ears as a deterrent to others speaking to him. And they all knew this; they all knew how it worked and went along with it, just as he did the same for them. Anyway, these swings only lasted three hours at most and then their Alex was back, with his loud voice and cheerful laughter and dumb comments.  
At least they knew how that Alex worked.

They had never ever seen him like this before. Zack was waving his hand in front of them and Jack was obnoxiously poking his shoulder. Rian simply sat there with a perplexed expression. But Alex didn't react or even indicate that he knew they were there. His eyes were glazed over, his body not moving.

Zack eventually put his hands on Alex's shoulders and shook him while loudly repeating his name.  
"Alex....Alex.....Alex....."  
Mere seconds later, Alex shook his head as if trying to get water out of his ears. His eyes came back into focus and he looked around, as if bewildered as to why they were staring at him with worried expressions.  
"What's wrong?" he almost whispered. He grimaced at the weakness he heard in his own voice, then tried again. "Why the fuck are you all looking at me like that?"  
Their expressions relaxed when Alex quickly fell back into character.

"Dude, you totally spaced on us there," Jack said. "You were just staring into space like you couldn't see us or anything!"  
"That's never happened before," Zack laughed. "We were getting kind of worried."  
Rian said nothing.

"Man, I don't even know what happened! I must've fallen asleep with my eyes open or something; I've never spaced out like that before. Did you spike my soda, Jack?"  
Jack and Zack joined in with Alex's easy laughter.  
Rian simply narrowed his eyes, realising that his doubts were reasonable when Alex's face dropped back into a harrowed expression before returning to a smile before they noticed.

"What were you guys talking about while I was spaced?The concert last night? I'm, like, 99% sure that there was a nun in the crowd...."

 

Alex launched into the story and double-checked that his sleeves were pulled down over his hands.  
_


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long. Things aren't great. The chapter is fairly horrific. My sincere apologies.

For the next few weeks, Alex made an extra effort to ensure that everything appeared as normal with him. He was skilled at the art of knowing how long and loud to laugh, and to appear to have seemingly boundless energy, and how to give off a general aura that all is fucking well. He was sure that the guys had written off his slip-up as a once off, and were no loner suspicious.

  
Alex performed in his collection of long sleeved black tops and had invested in some bracelets.  
-

 

Rian was suspicious as fuck.

  
Jack had always been oblivious, and Zack was too mellow to ever dig for information that mightn’t even exist in the first place. But Rian had that ability to see an extra layer, to scrape just below the surface. Sometimes he didn’t say much, but he noticed.

He noticed, for example, Alex’s regular disappearances before a show, often in a hurry, and his return was always accompanied by too-deep breaths that Rian knew were part of Alex’s technique for overcoming panic attacks.

He noticed when Alex drank three cups of coffee in the morning because he wasn’t sleeping (Alex never used to be a caffeine addict.) Rian noticed how, when they went out, that Alex never took more alcohol than would cause him to relinquish even some control. He noticed the moments where everything seemed a little too perfect- every laugh was too long, every statement too loud, every movement too exaggerated.

  
Rian was observant enough to notice these things, but also smart enough to know that confrontation was not the way to go with Alex. This was their lyricist, after all, the man of metaphors and double meanings and triple-crossing words, who preferred to dance on a line of evasive flowery language than use the brute force of plain speech.

One wrong step or too-clumsy word could shatter the fragments of Alex that he seemed to be holding together with pure bravado, leaving only dust, debris and broken glass.  
Part of Rian worried if he was overreacting; on the whole, Alex seemed fairly okay. He had never given the band a reason before not to assume that he was anything other than perfectly happy. Maybe Rian was overreacting. Alex was fine.

  
-

Alex was not fine. The days were all muddled together, and not in a “We’re on tour so is it Monday or Thursday?” way, but rather in a way that was about basic survival. Just get through one day. One night. One show. One hour. One at a time. Breathe.

  
But Alex couldn’t breathe. More often than ever, he was overtaken by a panic that caused his throat to constrict and his mouth to go dry and his breathing to become non-existent, leaving him on tiled floors of more bathrooms than he cared to remember, desperately gasping for breath and grasping for a list of reasons as to why he even bothered.

 

He spent nights staring blankly into space, alternating between absolutely nothing and nights where the ink over spilled from the pages and covered his arms with inky blue portrayals of everything he’s ever felt- and everything he’s never felt.

Those nights are better, because, although they leave him drained, at least they’re something. The Nights of Nothing lead to Alex forgetting what it is to breathe and live. On those nights, he decorates the cobwebs on his arms with crimson threads, marking the places he’s visited in his head. Some days the crimson and inky blue mix together, in an almost-fitting sort of way, as if to show that this is all that’s left.

The voice of insanity or the voice or nothing. Sometimes he feels like he’s choking on the air, or maybe on his words, or maybe on something else entirely that he’s forgotten how to feel.

  
Everything is forgotten in the morning. One day, he would like to wake up with the knowledge that he can’t remember his own name. Learn the patterns of the world again. Everything returns to some version of what it was before.

  
Alex has forgotten how to feel a lot of things.  
His days consist of trying to breathe, more often than not through the threads on his arm.

-

 

Rian still worries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to have the next chapter up on Monday. No promises, though. Forgive me.


End file.
